Stockholm syndrome: noun
'feelings of trust or affection felt in many cases of kidnapping or hostage-taking by a victim towards a captor.'


I will present you all with a few quotes from the book and then I will try to give my hopefully short opinion because my brain is already bleeding enough.


"He'd opened his mouth before acknowledging that he didn't want to talk to her. She was female and he male. Nothing else mattered."

"He'd force her down, envelope her, show her who her master was."

"She was his to punish or not, depending on his mood, and at this moment the only thing he wanted was for her to understand he was in charge."

""You will do what I command," he said. "What happens between us is for my pleasure, not yours. And if you can’t comprehend that—" He crouched so he could more easily strike her defenseless buttocks. "I’ll punish you until you do.""

"Besides, she was a piece of merchandise, gift wrapped for him."

"He only wanted a resting place for his cock. A willing one, his human half insisted. It doesn't matter, Puma returned."

"He’d take advantage of that, bring her down to his level. Going by instinct, he struck her ass as hard as he could do given the awkward angle. She shuddered and struggled to get free."

"The possibility stopped him from massaging her surely sore ass. No way would he allow her to think she was in control. He was! Even though he wasn’t sure what had prompted his anger, he started punishing her again and again. His breathing quickened and deepened with the renewed blows. This was good, perfect, a helpless creature delivered to him."

""You brought this on yourself," he said. "Maybe it’s what you want." The first blow to her too-accessible ass forced a curse from her lips. One thing she’d learned from previous spankings—the more she resisted, the longer the punishment lasted. Teeth clenched and eyes tightly closes, she silently counted as he struck her. Five swats were manageable, but ten had her wincing with every blow. By the time he reached fifteen, her head roared and her ass was on fire. This was their relationship, not all of it and thankfully not all the time, but at the core he disciplined and she endured."


My opinion:

Characters.

There is not much to say about them really. They are one sided as it gets.
Female lead Kai is a psychic that can talk to animals and that is why she is at some archeological find (there is a very loose connection there, just go with it) and there she wanders around and happens to encounter a puma that is half man half puma, imagine the coincidence. She gets subdued, forced, tied up, kidnapped and sexually molested but it's fine because after the Stockholm Syndrome kicks in she retroactively decides she actually wanted it all along (forget the crying, kicking, screaming, fearing, trying to run away etc).

Puma is well, half human half beast. Male lead - Hok'ee is his human side and Puma is his, you get it, puma side. Apparently he got turned into one of these because he did not accept his Native American heritage, that is so vaguely explained that I just cannot be bothered with it. Something about him being a man and young and able to reproduce a lot or something and that is why he is punished along with other 4 or 5 and the rest are not. Just go with it, it doesn't matter anyway.


Story.

Hahahaha, what story damn... woman gets into the area where pumas live, one puma stalks this woman then violently ties her with big thick rope first putting in her mouth then behind her to tie her hands behind her back and in the end her legs and kidnaps her tied like that and sexually molests her while she is scared crying fearing him. Then she realises she cannot escape him so she doesn't resist as much and he forces himself on her and then after some time of abusing this woman and punishing her she suddenly has an epiphany! Hallelujah! She actually does want this savage chauvinist rapist after all. She didn't immediately realise but after being hit enough times it got beaten into her. She is mad about this monster now. Everyone rejoice.

In the very last chapter of this overly long book the author is trying to fix all of this crap happening throughout the book by having the monster be gentle to her for the first time ever. It doesn't work because she is already brainwashed, how he now behaves is a moot point because he knows she will never leave. Give me a break.


Unintentionally funny part.

At some point in the story this main male character is talking to another puma and that other one says how he came (ejaculated) by listening to Hok'ee raping the woman and he is currently stroking his co&k when this happens:

"Nodding, Anaba released his co&k and patted Hok'ee's knee. Occasionally, when solitude and the need for sex became too much for them, they pleasured each other. They just didn't talk about this aspect of their relationship."

Because why not. Imagine now those five pumas turning into men and all just having an all male orgy. But let's not talk about it too much.

Also, just to point out, saying when solitude becomes too much and he hasn't been a puma that long, it's somewhere between a couple of months and a year you really start to understand the author's thinking. Yes, men just cannot help it. They cannot service themselves occasionally, no no, a couple of months is too long for just your hand or nothing, when push comes to shove and there are no women to kidnap and rape, just call your best mate and let him handle it. Cause that is what your best friend is for.


All in all.

I have zero respect towards this book. Since this is the only book I have read from this author I won't say the same about the author but I also certainly won't read any of the other works. I am not into self-torture up to that degree.

If you want to read about how NOT to get a woman, how NOT to respond to your kidnapping and rape, how NOT to have a toxic and abusive relationship, this book will provide you with perfect guidelines and examples about it.

How can this ever fall into a romance category? There is nothing here but a sexual encounter between a woman who lost in gambling to a man who would trade 50 pounds of her debt for a night of pure fu&king. That's all this is. Nothing after that. It stays on that one night of se%.

I purchased this book because I was under the false impression (thanks to the very wrongly category of steamy regency romance on Amazon) that I will actually read a story. Not read about two people boinking each other as the main focus with absolutely nothing else to follow.

I am beyond mad that this can fall into historical romance and steamy regency romance categories because it doesn't deserve to be there with the rest. This has as much of a plot as a porn video "with a story" where a guy comes to deliver pizza to some woman and then they boink and then he leaves, the end.

If you are looking for a se% scene, sure go ahead but even in that it is really below mediocre but if you are looking for something to actually read, for some actual characters and storyline, you are certainly not going to find it here.

In 'Hell Is Empty' Craig Johnson has attempted something very ambitious and done it pretty well but I hope he doesn't feel the need to do it again.

Unlike its predecessors, 'Hell Is Empty' doesn't have a mystery at its heart. We know from the beginning who the bad guys are, even if we don't know exactly why they're doing what they're doing. The FBI have, for various plausible reasons that they'll kick themselves for later, transported some very bad men into the Wyoming mountains just before a major ice storm (Hey, it's May, what did you expect at that altitude?). Of course, things go wrong, people die and the rest of the book is about Walt's relentless, lone pursuit of the men up the mountain in the storm.

At the beginning, this reads like a relatively normal hunt-the-bad-guys plot, with Walt at the centre bringing his unique mix of dry wit, erudite commentary, dogged determination and decisive action to the chase.

Then, as Walt gets tired, the altitude climbs and the weather gets worse, we move into something that feels more like a Vision Quest. It's not clear whether Walt is being guided by a real person (a character we met in a previous book) or by a spirit guide appearing as that person or whether Walt is just hallucinating as his refusal to give up bumps into the physical effects of hypothermia.

I think Craig Johnson does a splendid job of walking this is it real or isn't it line while keeping the tension high, the action constant and still finding time for to share Walt's reflections on Dante's 'inferno' and the idea that the worst hell is in the mind and Walt's deep understanding of how a monster like the man he is chasing is created and the terrible harm that he does.

The final scene at the top of the mountain is beautifully done. It's dramatic, visually stunning and works as a conclusion to both the mystical and the material explanations of Walt's quest.

The epilogue was also very distinctive. It went beyond the 'let's wrap up the loose ends and finish on a positive note' scope of the traditional epilogue and showed that Walt can't just shrug off his experience and step back into his old life. That rang true to me and I admired it.

BUT...

Although I could see that this was both a bold book to write and that it was well written, it wasn't as much fun as usual. Walt's head is a fascinating place to visit but an exhausting place to live in. In the books so far, Walt has been supported by a cast of interesting characters who aid or obstruct him in solving mysteries and bringing the bad guys to justice. In 'Hell Is Empty' we have nearly half a book that is Walt all the time and I found it tiring.

So, I'm hoping book eight, 'As The Crow Flies' brings me back to more familiar, less ambitious territory that's easier for me to enjoy.

Still, I recognise that, as is the way with Spirit Quests, the Walt who came down the mountain is not the same Walt who went up it and I'm intrigued to see how that change will manifest in future stories.

by Aldous Huxley

Non-fiction

This is a well-known treatise on altered perceptions and is loosely categorized as Philosophy.

The Doors of Perception is largely about the author's experience of mescaline and the altered mental perceptions of the world he experienced under the influence of the drug. I have to admit that I was a little disappointed with the limited viewpoint as this could have been much more interesting with input by other people, especially native American people who have traditionally used Peyote for spiritual questing in their rituals.

The sequel, Heaven and Hell, goes more into the philosophical musings that I was interested to find. In this follow-up, Huxley discusses correlations between hallucinogenic drug experience, especially the heightened sense of color, and religious experience as well as the natural attraction our species has to gemstones and flowers with bright colors.

It made for dry reading, yet had some interesting points. The rock band, The Doors, named themselves for this book so curiosity made me want to read it. I wouldn't recommend it for deep Philosophy, but it was interesting in parts and blissfully short. Reading a few pages at a time worked for me to keep from letting the boredom mask the worthwhile insights.

Following a traumatic accident in the Army, Kerr Taggart returns to Hell's Valley to come to terms with the man he’s become, so he can take the biggest chance of his life . . . asking the beautiful and forbidden Izzy Brand out on a date. But even if he achieves Mission Date Izzy Brand, Izzy’s family remains intent on destroying the Taggart family, and remains aligned with the rising supernatural creature plotting to steal Taggart land.

This was really good, right from the beginning. I really liked Kerr (although there were a few times I wanted to smack him upside the head) right off. I liked Izzy too, however for about the first half of the book I was really questioning her thought process. I hadn’t read any of the other books in the series, but it was pretty easy to catch on about the family dynamics. At this point, I plan on going back to read the first three! I highly recommend.

**I voluntarily read and reviewed this book